Postmodernism,Geography,and the Social Semiotics of Space

The nucleus of postmodern philosophy and theory is derived primarily from French neostructuralist writings. The ontological foundation of such literature is the idealist rejection of the possibility of knowing reality and, as a consequence, the enclosure of the subject within the signifying universe, which in turn results in the exaltation of the signifying processes as the only social processes. The same emphasis, but through nonverbal means, is demonstrated by postmodern architectural and urban design. In geography, however, postmodernism is interpreted differently. In two recent books (by Soja and by Harvey) the postmodern era in human geography is related to the heightened importance of space for social reality and theory. But the split of geography itself between Marxist geography on the one hand, and behavioural and humanistic geography on the other, shows the pertinence of the signifying dimension for the field of geography. In this paper, it is argued that the roles of space and meaning are equally important for geography, and it is proposed that an analysis of the signifying aspect of space may be achieved through semiotics, currently the most complete and sophisticated theory of meaning and culture. The main problem for geography, which is addressed in the final section of this paper, is the integration of a renewed version of the semiotics of space with an equally renewed Marxist geography, the most powerful explanatory approach to geography we have at our disposal.